Advanced MUD Concepts

Animated objects

I've recently written down an idea for a race of animated objects. Wizards put souls into them to get a talking or moving weapon or other object. Now, say the objects can animate more objects by binding an unwanted human or elven or whatever baby's soul to another one. I think this would be an interesting PC race, don't you?

Oh yeah! And hey...I'm gunna make my mud able to equip mobs! And maybe a lazy sword that yells, "I dont want to wake up today, adventurer!" Seriously, talking objects sound kinda silly. Imagine walking into a room as a shield and somebody picking you up and taking you into battle and then junking you. Not fun! Or maybe I've gotten you wrong and you mean somethig totalle different?

That sounds like alot of fun. Imagine a virus that infects souls, forcing them to wander the earth until they find an inanimate object to possess. Then this object inherits the behaviour of the infected soul -- perhaps players would be accosted by the aggressive bodyparts of a fallen enemy, or your sword might suddenly jump out of your hands and hop away, only to use it's pointed edge to infect more souls.

funkalicious: I think that'd be great fun! Say you walk into the room as a shield. And someone picks you up and takes you into battle. Just as the wayward adventurer engages a group of aggressive mobs, you leap out of his hands and hop away!

But one would expect soul-possessed objects to be more powerful than regular objects, making it worthwhile to seek out people of these races and forge a symbiosis. It could be like battling with a group, only with one person. Like Voltron.

I think such a thing would be pushing the limits of the multiple-type system that most muds use. That's why I advocate a single object-type system =).

As for that [animated objects] to be a race that is a new idea. As for mages putting souls into objects, that's an old idea that you ripped off from ad&d. It's called ego weapons or golems.

Wait a minute. Just because an idea appeared somewhere 'first' doesn't mean that it was 'ripped off' when someone else has it. Further, that doesn't preclude discussion on the idea, nor does it incite silly statements that it was most certainly ripped off from one source.

Ideas are ideas. What matters is that they are in front of us right now. You could have made a useful contribution by possibly outlining how AD&D handles their golems or ego weapons -- I, for one, have never played AD&D and so I do not know how it is done in that system.

alright, im sorry , Yui.. you have a vailid point which i understand but maybei should have said something differnt. but yes ad&d has Ego weapons and golems that have souls within them , they can move speak and have special powers.
im very shocked that you never heard of ad&d , they even made a movie of it.

Xanferious wrote:
as for that to be a race thats is a new idea as for mages putting souls into objects thats an old idea that you ripped off from ad&d, its called ego weaopns or golems.....

Golems were not "invented" by D&D, they come from Hebrew folklore. The idea of trapping a soul in an object (or having intelligent objects) comes from real-world mythology as well. The concept of "ego objects" has been used in fantasy literature that predates D&D, as well, such as Michael Moorcock's "Elric of Melniboné", or J. R. R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings".

I'm very shocked that you never heard of Lord of the Rings, they even made a movie of it.

The idea of trapping a soul in an object (or having intelligent objects) comes from real-world mythology as well.

It's quite common in the Japanese Shinto religion. Every time you see rocks or areas sectioned-off with ropes around them, or objects with oblong papers with a few (usually Chinese) characters written on them, there's a superstitious belief that a spirit or soul is trapped inside.

But I have to ask, what is an "ego object"? A google search is of little help.

"Ego" as in "personality" - thus the two examples I gave earlier. If you're familiar with Lord of the Rings, you may have heard this passage before: "But the Ring had a will of its own, and a way of slipping from one hand to be found by another, so that it might at last get back to its master." Here's a quote from from the other book I mentioned: "Elric lifted the huge blade easily and turned it this way and that, admiring its alien beauty. 'Stormbringer,' he said . . . . it was suddenly as if he had been born again and that this runesword was born with him. It was if they had never been separate. 'Stormbringer.' And the sword moaned sweetly and settled even more smoothly into his grasp".

I'm sure you're familiar with the One Ring, but I'll elaborate a little on Stormbringer, as it's not so well known. Elric is a powerful sorcerer, but is physically weak through an illness - he requires drugs in order to be strong enough to walk. However he is given a sword - Stormbringer - by a Chaos God in return for certain services. Stormbringer doesn't talk or anything like that, but it has a certain personality of its own. It loves killing - particularly those who Elric is fond of - and can make animal-like noises when pleased or angry. It is able to guide his hand both in and out of combat, and when it kills it drains the souls of its victims, transferring some of that strength to Elric, making him almost unbeatable (in one book he takes on an entire army, and is only captured when he slips on the pile of bodies surrounding him). When thrown away, the sword returns to him - and when his friends are nearby, it seems to turn in his hand, striking them down (it kills his fiance and several of his close friends in this way).

Perhaps this wasn't what you had in mind with your original post, but here's what popped into my head regarding a race that possesses objects.

They could begin the game in a room with no corporeal form. Just a spirit, and they would have to find objects to draw to them in a sense, and create a body made of the mish-mash. As the shape and original function of the items are unimportant, they could use just about any object for anything. It wouldn't be a matter of wearing an iron breastplate for armor, this race would somehow attach it to their body to increase their physical size and strength. The race wouldn't have wear locations obviously but just their body, which might be as large or as small as they choose. It might need to be big enough to have legs and walk for example, but beyond that perhaps the golem would have to make a tradeoff of speed for strength.

Not to ramble, but I think there are some cool ways of going about this. For example, perhaps they can draw dirt in rooms to them, becoming something like a mud golem. A mud golem might be weaker but also faster than say, an iron golem. Or he might be able to absorb more damage because of the flexible nature of his body. There could be several material types like this, and players could mix and match to get a bit of the abilities of each perhaps.

Your mud could have conglomerated monsters running around with swords for legs, tree trunk bodies and great fists of rock

You might also want to check out the Demons in GodWars - they are able to transform themselves into rather good weapons. While in weapon form they can also jump into (or out of) peoples hands, and cast spells.

It was quite amusing when they were first introduced - I was playtesting a demon and helping a newbie, by casting spells on his opponents and healing him (as a sword). Another player saw this and decided that he just HAD to have that wonderful new weapon, so he killed the newbie. He was rather surprised when the sword then jumped out of the newbie's corpse, transformed into a huge demon, hacked him up, then transformed back into a sword and leapt back into the corpse!

Once people got used to them, they worked fairly well. It was a power that wouldn't be used often - but occasionally a powerful demon PC would bully weaker demons into acting as his weapons for a particularly dangerous fight.

I should have probrally replied sooner. Heh. I got kinda busy IRL. Funk, in the mud I'm planning, there's no junk command, but you can destroy items by other means. That's how you would die as an object, yes. You will also be able to pick up smaller animals and throw them at people. Anyway, the object would be completely mundane except that it has a soul in it. That means, it can't talk, it can't move, it can only sit inside the sword or table or whatever and twiddle it's thumbs. After a while, it would get used to it's new "body" and be able to percieve it's surroundings somewhat, but that's about all. Now wait, hear me out! You could create as an animated object, but you can be put into one that has been altered so that it can talk and move and even cast spells if you so choose via runes and other magics. This is how the race began: A single object that could use magic to create more animated objects did so, and now we have a bunch of flying swords. And Xanferious, I "ripped it off" just as much as Tolkein, AD&D, and others did. I found it was a cool idea that hasn't been done before, so I wrote it down. I have tried godwars, and that I think is what I mainly got this idea from.

Ohh, and I got another good idea for un-runed possessed objects from a reply someone did... After a while, the soul would learn how to keep itself from being damaged so much. That would give it time to be discovered by a rune magician or something that could let it speak.

There is of course also the Stone of Aldur, in the Eddings' books about Belgarion, which definitely recognises its friends - and enemies.

Speaking of animated swords, we have a pretty nifty object in our mud - a developing sword. It loves to drink the blood of orcs and other evil beings, and so with each kill becomes a bit more powerful. So, starting out at a pretty low damage level, it keeps developing with each fight, at a certain level it starts casting different spells, and it ends up being the most powerful weapon in the Game. (Needless to say, it is extremly hard to get, and so far only 3 players succeeded).